Run
by Red River
Summary: Run. Run as fast as you can. A tag following the battle with Aokiji, over Zoro's shoulder. ZoLu, light.


A/N: This is an addition/outside perspective on episode 228, after the fight between Luffy and Aokiji. It comes over Zoro's shoulder but is done in second person, the effectiveness of which I'm not positive of. It's intended to be Zoro/Luffy in a light way. Enjoy – comments and feedback always welcome.

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**Run**

Run. Run as fast as you can. Be the first one back to the place where you left him—the wide belt of open grass between the trees and the ocean, between green and the rippling water, once blue, now a solid, blinding white in the afternoon sun, stilled by the same hand that was turned against Luffy when you left him, running as fast as you could, orders that made you angry ringing in your furious ears. Beat Sanji back, because you're his first mate and Sanji is clumsy sometimes, like now, slipping on the frozen blades of grass that break beneath you with every step. One slip like that and Luffy will break, too. And anyway, he's yours to carry.

Pick him up. Gently. Though ice is heavy he is not, lighter than you expected, than you remember from the moments—three, four years of moments—when you've held him up. He is bent awkwardly under the sheath of ice, sliding back, his body curved, one arm raised, extended. Lift him up to rest against your shoulder, his body curled into yours by neither choice nor carelessness. Feel the burning of his face against your neck. Don't think about how fragile he is right now, how you can surround him with one bent arm, how Sanji is looking at you, smoking an unlit cigarette. Think about the traction on the bottom of your boots, the lines in the sole gripping every pebble on the ground beneath you.

Run. Run as fast as you can.

At the ship, they will crowd around you, around him. Throw them out. Send them back to the main cabin and Robin—stiff now but not frozen, warmer than Luffy, at least to the touch—almost before they have even seen him, before they have figured out that it is Luffy, not a sash of brilliant ice, you have wound across your chest, around your neck. Let Chopper show you how warm the water should be but figure everything else out for yourself—how to hold him up under the spray, how it aches to lose feeling from your fingertips in, how long it takes before his thawing arm can slide down, limp, into the overflowing water, boneless, bright red, but unbroken.

Run. Run a hand through your hair, though the seawater has dried it into spikes. Clench your teeth because you are angry—at the admiral, at Sanji, at Robin… at yourself, at Luffy, at yourself.

Hold on. Hold him up as the ice begins to slip away, as his skin recedes from red to deep, deathly white, the same color as the ice melting out of his hair, out of the creases in his clothing. Take off his soaked red shirt. Leave the rest because he shivers so badly, as you do it, that he cracks his head back against the tile wall of the shower so hard that for an instant you are sure he is going to shatter, explode of his own involition and fall into your lap in chunks, in pieces that can never be put back together. Hold him in. Turn the water up. Put one hand behind his head, between him and the tile; put the other on his shoulder. Bend him into you and slide forward into the shower's spray until you are as wet as he is, and he is caught up in between your arms, is buried as deeply in your chest as your ribcage, as your beating heart. His heart is beating, too. Feel it in your fingers, the ones buried in his jet-black hair.

Run. Run your hand across your eyes.

Ignore the knock on the door. Ignore the second one, too. Send them away again one by one, Usopp, Nami, Chopper. Tell Sanji to get lost, to get back to Robin—that he's fine, that you've got it covered, that he should be embarrassed to be hanging around here, when one of his precious girls is damaged, too. Tell him to get out. Tell him he's gone soft. Say it because you know it will make him leave. Make him leave because this moment—the way Luffy's head has lolled back into the dip between your shoulder and your neck, the way his body has lost all of its sharp angles under the water, as if truly, for the first time, without bone, the way his hair is still thick with ice crystals, which cling like beetles to the strands as you pluck them out with your fingertips—this moment feels like a secret, one Sanji hasn't earned the right to, one you don't want to share with him. Because you trust yourself—and only yourself—with his weakness, and so does he.

Run. Run your hand through his hair.

When he stops shaking, he will speak you. Listen.

"No… I… Grandpa… I don't…"

Listen. Listen to the mumbles that are incoherent, to the drip from the silent showerhead, each drop breaking as it hits the surface of the water. Listen to it disappearing down the drain as you lift his crumpled body from the bath into your lap, into a towel, into clothes that are easy to put on. Listen to his eyes slipping open, slipping closed.

"Zoro… Zoro…"

Let him say your name like that. Don't ask _what is it?_—don't insult yourself by pretending he's awake. Just let him be. He can have it—that name. You wouldn't give it to anyone else.

Pick him up. Gently.

Stay awake. Stay awake even after you've settled him onto one of the futons that have been pulled out in the main room of the cabin, after Usopp and Chopper have fallen asleep sprawled out on the floor, after Sanji has slumped back in a chair against the wall and Nami has crawled out from under her blankets and onto the mat beside Robin, and tangled herself in the other woman, who is still sleeping, still shaking. Stay awake as the moon slips from the cabin window into the calm black sea. Stay awake for hours, sitting at the edge of his futon, your back against the wall, your swords against your shoulder. Hold that wall up with your body as the stars wink out. It will be worth it, in the twilight before dawn, when he opens his eyes and stares into the darkness, and you are there to see it. Worth it when the first thing he says is your name.

"Zoro?"

This time, allow yourself to answer.


End file.
